First let me introduce myself as this is my very first post. I am a die hard HOKIES fan that truly believes there are only two seasons in a year. (1) Football Season and (2) The time period leading up until the next Football Season. I eat, sleep and work with Football on my mind. I usually just read the content on this wonderful website you call The Key Play and very seldom comment. Today is the day that I become an active member of this great Community!

Completely OT, but I love seeing our school in the news for some pretty awesome things...the fact that UVA got third is a little disappointing, but consolation is to see them both on the same list with VT on top.

With the articles about UNC and other things passing around, I thought this article from the APA might be interesting. Athletes operating under abusive coaches are more apt to cheat in order to win. Not a stretch in any way to believe as I'm sure there's a lot of perceived pressure to win, and when not handled correctly...

It would be like the kid whose parents want them to succeed in school, but pressure them through violence or threat of violence for doing poorly.

We're in the VT Sports summer doldrums right now, and I know we all love our Spaghetti Western GIFs when they pop up for various reasons, so I thought I'd mention this topic. Eli as Tuco in "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly" was just a great movie character. Eli did a great job selling that role in that movie. I don't remember him as much in "The Magnificant Seven" which is also a great movie, but he wasn't as much a central character there.

98, wow, any of us can only hope to live that long. He had been married to his wife for 66 years! That is something. Obviously Eli Wallach believed in his family and lived that until his death. An example for us all. Celebrate a great entertainer. I'll leave you with these:

Yahoo had a link to a new article out today talking about Michigan's ticket sales and the trend that's been hitting the nation. I know TKP had discussed it at one point last year, but the article brings up some good points. It's a little long winded, but covers a few different things.

Mike Vick has once again stated on national media that he revolutionized the game as a QB in the NFL. He claimed to be the one that started it all. I totally agree with Mike Vick. He is a once-in-a-lifetime QB.
Mike Vick also said winning a super bowl would cement his legacy even as a back up to Geno Smith:

so news for today is that Joker Phillips has resigned as WR coach at UF and Chris Leak will take over. Crazy to think that an ex QB will now coach WR's, wonder what effect that will have on any of the incoming WR's and '15 WR's.

I made one, on ESPN y'all are more than welcome to join I accidentally made it public I'll try to switch it to private but the group is called thekeyplay and if I set it to private the password will be the same!

With the 2014 NFL Draft officially over, it's now time for everybody's second favorite game (behind "How did my team do?") "What Does Next Year Look Like?"

Virginia Tech has 16 Seniors on the roster and another 14 r-Juniors, and from what I can see, 3 Juniors who might be feeling the heat from those behind them and might want to take the jump at their highest point.

The Seniors:
Who should see their name called next...April? May? June? From Bud Lightning(t) Kysheon Jarrett, Detrick Bonner, and Big Lu. From Lefty 2.0...nada

I will preface this by saying this is not really Virginia Tech related in any fashion, though I put in a couple of tenuous analogies. However, I am super pumped for tomorrow and could not resist writing this, mostly because my favorite team is now relevant (at least for one game). This is for those of you who are not overly familiar with English soccer, but tomorrow and Sunday will be presented with a very good opportunity to see it at its most glorious. If you love sports for the spectacle of sport, the competition, the drama, the chance to watch world class athletes at the highest level do battle on the playing field, and the potential for chaos to ensue across an entire country, you should read this and watch tomorrow and Sunday.

Some of these are in the past but, I thought I'd include them as a means to confuse UVA grads looking for Zima outlets.
There are more beer fests per year, in Virginia, than fans at the UVA Spring Game.

Arranged by date for easy reference I'll see if I can keep this up to date.

Ah, it's Spring and the smell of new malt is in the air. there is a lot happening all over the place this weekend, Kentucky Derby, Beer fests, Strawberry Festival in Roanoke. I hear the Chili cookoff has been postponed though. Check before you go, please.

The banter about the RB position got started over in another thread, so I wrote an abridged novel to go a bit deeper into the subject.

Frank has come forward and said he wants the running back competition down to three backs by August. The good news is that all of the likely candidates have been practicing with the team all spring, as the new guys coming in the summer (Shai, D.J. Reid, Taybus Taylor) will probably all redshirt. The bad news for everyone who doesn't make the 3-man-rotation cut is that Frank wants to move the others to different positions (insert obligatory tight end joke). Let's break down the competitors:

I'm working out how to cover cities where we'll be having away games. We'll have 7 this year so I need to get it worked out.

Asheville, NC is a big beer town in a small package. Named Beer City USA several times in succession they lost the title last year to a city in Michigan.
An industry buddy tells me there are 13 breweries or brewpubs in Asheville plus 4 in progress. Asheville claims the highest number of breweries per capita than anywhere else in The U.S., about 8000 persons per brewery.

I will hit on a few here but no in-depth reviews, this will be more like a tour book.

I mentioned on another thread that I was going to try to map out some geographic hot spots for recruiting in Virginia and break it down via GIS into several maps, whether it be the sheer number of players, the amount of players that eventually became starters from each region, the amount of starters per recruit from a region and so on (I plan on exporting about 11 maps by the time this is all said and done)

that being said I just finished collecting data from the 2002 recruiting class (rival's first year on the map) and I thought id share some interesting info with you guys at least some stats I find kind of interesting.